God, causation and occasionalism

The doctrine that there are no logically necessary connections
in nature
can be used to support both occasionalism, according to which God alone
can be a
cause, and ‘anti-occasionalism’, according to which God cannot
be a cause. Quentin
Smith has recently invoked the ‘no logically necessary connections
in nature’
doctrine in support of the latter. I bring two main objections against
his thesis that
God (logically) cannot be a cause. The first is that there are good reasons
to think
that there are irreducible dispositions in nature, and that where such
dispositions are
manifested, there are logically necessary causal connections. The second
objection
is that even if the ‘no logically necessary connections
in nature’ doctrine is true, one
is not forced to deny causal efficacy to God: with no breach in logical
propriety, one
may embrace occasionalism.